Stephen Warner:
Rick is the king of organic social media engagement for musicians. And he's here giving his time for you all. So most of you here, there's a good chance you probably already know who Rick is if you're here. But Rick is the guy who launched the music career of Taylor Swift as her first-ever manager. He's also an awesome golfer. He was just sharing with me that he got his first hole in one and he has a plaque for it and everything. It was over 160 yards. So, killer golfer, really good dude, family man. And he's also, most importantly, more important for you today than any of those other things, he's helping thousands of independent musicians around the world to reach an audience that they've never been able to reach before, to build true relationships and engagement with their fans and be able to make a living doing what they absolutely love the most, which is music, and make an impact in the world.
And so, you as an independent musician here, you can think about all the amazing things that Rick's done in his past. But right now the thing that matters the most is what he can do for you here today. And really just thankful that Rick is here with us. He's going to share some really cool Instagram stuff, and for those of you who are StreetTeam users, we're going to show you how you can actually use these strategies to bring in fans into your StreetTeam. And without further ado, I'm going to hand it right over to Rick.

Rick Barker:
Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm seeing some familiar faces and names in the chat and some clients of mine as well. What's interesting is with Modern Musician, with what Michael originally went out and created on his own, years ago, I was introduced to Michael, I think it was by Greg Wilmot, who actually connected Michael and I. And I was blessed to be on his first virtual summit. And what I loved about Michael's approach was Michael was coming from the angle of an artist, just like you. I always tell people, you can't get a degree from one book and one professor. And the cool part about the group that Michael has kind of, I don't want to say put together, but he's kind of aligned himself with, we all come at it from a different angle. We all have the same goal. And the same goal is for you to finally start monetizing your music.
The goal is to help you get your music in front of the right people as possible. And lately the goals that we've been focusing a lot on is how do we do it that saves you the most time? And I think when Michael set out to build StreetTeam, a lot of it was how can we achieve our end goal with as little steps as possible by removing a lot of the kinks? For a while, when we first started, technology, as much as it was our friend, it was also a nightmare. Because what would always happen is, the night of your big release, the night of your video premiere is when stuff would stop working with technology. A lot of people think that we send out the "Oops, the link wasn't working" email as a marketing strategy, and some knuckleheads do. But most of the cases for us, it's because shit broke. And all of a sudden we're like, "Oh my God, I just sent out 10,000 emails and this link isn't working, or it's sending it to the wrong page."
That's frustrating for us, but it can also be frustrating for you, because the hardest thing to get today is attention. There are so many distractions, there are so many people that are vying for their attention. So when you work so hard to get that music video played, to get that song heard, and then they decide to go down this journey that you want to send them on, the one thing you don't want is for something to break, because the reality is they're not coming back to find you. They're going to end up landing wherever it worked well. So when the Modern Musician team set out to create StreetTeam, it was to eliminate a lot of those problems. It was to eliminate a lot of additional expenses. In our businesses, it's funny, I just recently made a switch to a new platform as well, and I'm saving $20,000 a year because I don't need this monthly membership and this thing and that thing.
And I know Michael and Stephen took that into consideration when building out StreetTeam because they were like, look, we know they need this tactic, but how can we incorporate that tactic into StreetTeam? We know that they need this to happen. How can we incorporate that? And unfortunately with anything, we're never going to get a hundred percent ourselves. And if we could, you're definitely not paying what they're charging you for it. You would be spending in the thousands and thousands of dollars to be able to do it. So the fact that they've made this part of your business affordable, hats off to them. What I've been working on and focusing on, when I left Taylor in 2008, it was a real interesting decision that I had to make. I was going to actually be an instant millionaire on January 1st, 2008. The way that I had structured my deal with her was that I was on a salary the first couple years and then I would go to a commission.
Because as you know, the same way that you as an independent artist, it takes years to start making money, truth be told, it takes even longer for a signed artist to start making money because of the advances, because of them having to sit and wait to be a priority. The cool part about what all of you have right now, and I don't know if you understand how special this is, is you are the president of your record company. If your artist, you, is not getting the attention that they deserve, that's on you. If you, the artist, the only artist signed to your record label right now, is not getting your songs marketed properly or music heard or video seen or creatives made, that's on you, the marketing department, the creative department. You are your own record label. So the question that I'm asking all of my clients this year is, would you want to be signed to your label, knowing the effort that the label put in to you last year?
Think about that for a second, because at a record label, you have to, one, hope that you're the priority, two, hope that they decide that you're going to even get to release a song. There are so many artists that were signed to major labels last year that had zero releases. But they're signed to a label. They can tell all their buddies they're signed to a label. Yes, but they don't have the freedom to release music when they want, connect when they want, do all the things that they want to do. You, as an independent artist, you don't have those same restrictions. And I want you to start thinking about being independent as an advantage and not a disadvantage. And think about this. When the majority of your major superstars right now are counting down the days that they are going to be out of their record contracts, that should be telling you something.
The problem is the majority of you have this false belief that you need a record company in order to be successful. That is not true. What you need is the ability to get the right product in front of the right audience and make an offer. And that's what Modern Musician teaches you. All of you are going right into that offer. The problem that I see is most of you are unwilling to build the relationship first before asking for the money. Now, the offer does not always have to be monetary. The offer could be to play your video, because the way we teach you is that once someone plays your video, now we have the ability to retarget. So the only offer we wanted at that time at first introduction was to get them to pick you. And I don't think you realize how valuable that is, because when someone is listening to a playlist or the radio, they never chose for your song to come on next.
Do you guys all understand that? If you're just passively listening to a playlist, you don't choose the music that comes, it's chosen for you. When someone pushes play, they chose you. You went from cold to warm in a matter of seconds. So the goal is how do we get you in front of the right person to get them to make that decision? And then once they make that decision, how do we then get them into a funnel? And the cool part about me being a guest here today is I can talk nerdy marketing talk with you, because I know you guys are all being taught that, is how do we then get them into your funnel? And more importantly, how do we not try to go in for the kill too fast, which will kill the conversions on your funnel?
And those are the things that I noticed, is we did a great job with our copy. We did a great job with the thumbnail. We did a great job getting them to push play. We got them to leave the platform to go over to your funnel. But then something happened. So here's the thing, everything else worked up until that point. Why? Because we made it easy. Most of the time we're starting to complicate things when it comes to the funnel, and we want to also make that as easy as possible. And those are some of the strategies that I'm going to share with you today, is once we got them, let's nurture that relationship. Let's build that relationship. Because think about this, we're always going to make an offer for those people that will take us up on it. But what we have to do is also have that nurturing sequence in place for those that didn't, and that's what's great about StreetTeam.
It's like, somebody comes into your funnel, they don't take you up on the offer. Well, guess what you guys have been taught to do? You build out another conversation with them in order to bring it back the second time. They may not be ready by then. They may not understand the value of it. They may be old and not into a sticker pack. They may just love to stream music and buy T-shirts. Not all of them are going to do a free plus shipping, but that doesn't mean you lost your chance. And I think sometimes we forget that. We just blame everything for not working. No, we found the right person. Remember, they found you, they clicked on you, they came over. So they're telling you, "I'm the right person. I just may not be ready for this right now."
In my opinion, I'm not going to tell you what you need to do because all of you need to make your own decisions. But what you need to do is stop putting so much pressure on yourself that things aren't working too early. I think too often I see independent artists give up way too fast. So once you make mistakes, and we're all going to make mistakes, once something doesn't work, we need to sit back and re-look at it and go, okay, why didn't it work? Maybe it was the right offer for the wrong person. So what do we do? We go find the right people. Those are the things that I like to focus on, and those are the things that I like to teach. Because the technology is there to serve you. The amount of money that Modern Musician and myself spend in our own businesses every year to simplify your process... A couple years ago I had a come to Jesus meeting and I had to play the role of Jesus.
And I'll tell you what the issue was. It's very funny because it involved Modern Musician. So what happened was is somebody came to me and they sent me an email and they said, "Thank you so much for introducing me to Modern Musician. I've been in their..." I think it's called the Gold Artist Academy. I think that's what you guys are... "Part of the Gold Artist Academy and everything is just going really well." This artist already had an audience. They already understood business. And this was the Ferrari that they needed. They already knew how to drive a stick and they already knew what was the hole in their business. So I went to him and I said, "Can I ask you a question?" I said, "You follow me on socials, you've been on my email list for three years and you've never purchased anything from me. You tell me how great I am."
And here's what he said to me, and this is a very valuable lesson that all of you can learn. He said, "Well, I figured your stuff wasn't as good because it didn't cost as much." And what I heard was, I need to have a high ticket offer for those people that are ready for a high ticket offer. Because if you're out bargain shopping, you're not really a business. It's like, if you have a heart problem, are you going to go bargain shop the heart doctor, or are you going to find the baddest, best heart doctor that you can possibly find? So what I said to them is I said, "Listen, that's their business model and it's a smart model because there are people that need that. The problem is a lot of people jump into something before they're qualified for it, and then they blame that for not working, and then they call it a scam."
And I'm like, "Look, your lack of failure doesn't make something a scam. It means you got to something probably before you were ready." So I said, "Please don't confuse my generosity in my business model with the value of what it is that I have to offer." So someone also texts and they said, "Thank you for all that free content that you put out." And I said, okay, I'm going to do something that I know no one would ever have the balls to do. I'm going to show them my tax returns. I'm going to show them exactly what I spend every year so that they can have free content. And when they saw that I spend $600 a month for my email list, when they saw that I spent $1,000 a year for Kajabi, when they saw that I spent $300 a month for ClickFunnels, when they saw that I had coaching that I spent $35,000 a year on, when they saw that my Zapier bill, what it was...
So for me to give this free content that they were so excited about, it wasn't until I showed them, I said, "Look, it's not what you make, it's what you keep." Yes, I generated, I think that year it was like $480,000 in gross. But when they saw that I had over $200,000 worth of expenses in my business, and that I still drove my 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid that's paid for. That I wasn't wearing fancy watches, just a Fitbit, so I can see how many steps my fat ass takes every day. But when they saw that I wasn't a millionaire... And you know what? Who cares if I'm a millionaire? All of you want to make as much money as you possibly can in your business. If I'm correct, say yes in the chat.

Stephen Warner:
Yes.

Rick Barker:
Would you like to make as much money that's possibly available to you with your business? Exactly. So why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't Modern Musician? And that's where that mindset shifted for them all of a sudden, is I said, "Look, here's the thing, if you are a cheap person, you're going to attract cheap people. And most of you won't be able to run a business with that because, news to self, no one has to pay to consume your product. You guys realize that, right? No one has to pay to watch your videos or hear your music. And in most businesses, they would go broke or out of business if that... Think about you walk into Costco, you sample the product, and you just pick it up and walked out.
"They'd go out of business. But that's what people are doing with your music and your videos every single day. They're walking in, they're sampling the product and they're leaving. And most of the time they're leaving is because you don't make an offer. You don't give them the opportunity to go further with you. And we're going to fix that. We're going to share with you some tactics. Now, the tactics in business will always change. That's the technology. That's how we're doing things. But the strategies in business have never changed. There's three ways to grow a business. All right? Repeat that. Three things. One, you need to increase the number of customers that you have. Two, you need to raise your prices. And three, you need to make more offers to the people that are already spending money with you. In any business, that's really the only three ways to grow your business.
"So how do we do that for you? One is we need to get more people to see your music. The cool part is we both teach Facebook and Instagram ads. So we know that's the lowest, most effective, cost-effective way for you to reach your audience. Problem is most of you are doing your ads wrong. That's for a whole nother day. The next thing is that you don't nurture that relationship. You're like the person on the street that walks up to a stranger and starts trying to kiss them. At some point, depending on how much alcohol they have, that may work. Or if you're going to the person who hasn't been kissed in three years, they might welcome that. But most of the case, that's not the case. We need to get to know each other a little bit better.
"So I'm going to encourage you, one, is to make sure you're finding the right people. Two, make sure that what you're doing is for them. Now, you might be asking yourself, 'Well, Rick, that's real easy for you and Modern Musician because you have products that we need.' Well, do people really need our stuff? The answer is, 'Oh yes, they absolutely need your stuff.' How many of you would survive in life without music? I wouldn't. It's going to be kind of boring at a wedding if you're doing a first dance to silence. It's going to be kind of boring. When you're trying to get busy with your girl and you're having to depend solely on your own groove and don't have Prince playing in the background, or whoever you get busy to. You can tell I'm older."

Stephen Warner:
I'm going to try Prince. I'm going to try Prince.

Rick Barker:
Yeah. So music plays such a valuable role. Write this down, whatever you're doing. You are selling emotions. You are selling emotions. Your music can make people laugh. Your music can make people cry. Your music can make people want to party. Your music can make people want to think about what's going on in their life. How many times, if you're in a mood, you go to a song that you know is going to bring you out of that mood? Taylor's very first song that she released as a single was called Tim McGraw. It wasn't about Tim McGraw, it was the power of radio. It was the power of hearing a song. What she said in that song is, when you hear Tim McGraw, I hope it takes you back to that place. Music brings emotions out of all of us. So, here's something that I want to share with you.
These phrases in your copy will change the game for you. Have you ever felt? Have you ever experienced? Have you ever wondered? Because now you've just opened up someone's brain to say, "Okay, can I connect with this person?" And it also makes sure you're getting the right people. For example, have you ever experienced heartbreak? I don't know any person yet, that is not a baby, and babies even experience heartbreak, they just don't know what it's called yet and they can't talk to tell you about it. But I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced heartbreak. "I know exactly how you feel. That is what inspired me to write this song." Now, if there's a play button and I've experienced heartbreak, I'm going to see what inspired you. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to blank, blank, blank? "I know exactly how you feel because I wondered that too."
So not only what you're doing, you're doing two things right there. One is you're connecting with their emotion, and two, you're letting them know that you're like them. Those are the people we want to follow. We don't want to follow people we're not like. We don't go to a church of people that believe this, if we believe this. We don't go to this restaurant if it serves meat and we're vegetarians. So instead of trying to please everyone, be okay when we eliminate people. Just to let you know, full disclosure, and those of you that have never experienced me before, I'm pretty straight up. I have no reason to BS you. Nothing that I sell with that one individual purpose will ever change my lifestyle. My wife will still bitch at me about the things she bitches at me about. I'll still drive the same car. I'll still pay the amount in taxes that I pay.
So I always tell that to artists because they're like, "Well, this guy's just trying to get my 497 bucks." I'm like, "Look, honestly, respectfully, your $497 by itself will not have an impact on my life. But boy, will what I teach you in that $497 investment have an impact on your life." That's the same thing I want you guys to think about your music. You need to let them know and be okay telling them, "What I have, this song, will have an impact on you because it's having an impact on others." And that's what I want you to start thinking about. Don't be afraid. And one of the things, so those of you that are in my world, so Quentin and a couple of you act like you've never heard this before. But when people come into our world and we collect their email address, we put them through, for me, I call it a nurture sequence. I'm not certain, Stephen, what do you guys call something like that?

Stephen Warner:
Something like that. Yeah.

Rick Barker:
Yeah. So it's a nurture sequence, and in that nurture sequence, I'm setting the stage to ultimately make an offer. First email is to deliver whatever it is that you promised them, whether it be your music, whether it be a video, wherever the case may be. The next video, I go and I tell a story to show our relatability, and I lead it back to the music. The third one, what I like to do is I like to explain. And when I say I, pretend I'm you, pretend I'm the independent artist. I like to explain to them what an independent artist means. Because you just assume that the fan knows what that means. Here's what the majority of fans think. When they see you on Spotify and they see a perfectly polished video on YouTube, they think you're loaded.
Why? Because all the artists that they see with the bling and the fancy things, that's what they're associating you with, that you've already made it. And you're hoping that they're going to figure out that most of you are broke as shit, and most of you are investing all of everything that you have into your music. Don't be afraid to tell them that. So the story that I like to use is, write this down, this one key phrase. Many of you have asked, "What is an independent artist?" I keep hearing that term. So now we are going to go in and say, "Well, what that means is that I fund the whole entire operation. I pay for my own recordings. I pay for my own videos. I'm not with a major label, so I have to pay for my own marketing. Those videos that you really like, I have to pay for all that.
"This email list that I've created, I have to pay for all that. And as most of you know," write that down too, "As most of you know," because even when people don't know it, they want to think that they know it, so when you fill in that blank, they're going to go, "Oh, I know that." "As most of you know, you may have heard, there's not a lot of money being paid to artists through streaming." Because most of them think that "I pay $9 a month for Spotify. Everybody must be getting taken care of." They don't read the articles we read. They don't understand the hurt that we are having right now. So what we're able to do then at that point is to say, "Many of you have asked, what's an independent artist?" And blank, you fill in that story that I shared.
A lot of you will have this recording, so go back, plagiarize any of my words that you want. They're my gift to you. What you're going to end up saying is, "So how I fund my own record company and putting out the music that you're dancing to and the music you're making out to, and the music," you bring it back, "is through donations, is through people supporting me, through my merchandise, is through people joining my fan club, is through..." Whatever it is that you're ultimately going to offer them, and then you make the offer. Too often, I think that we don't give people a chance to spend money with us. It's like we figure they're going to figure it out on their own. They're not, so you have to lead them down that road. And then what you have, and one of the cool things when Michael and Stephen were showing me some of the behind the scenes things that were going on with StreetTeam, is you have the ability with utilizing their email system.
And for those of you that may not have it, any email system should tell you this, is you will know who clicked on a link in your email. So you're able to then go back in and say, "Okay, I want to share this email with everyone who clicked but did not join my StreetTeam. I want to send this to everyone who didn't click." It's a different message to them. Maybe your pitch wasn't good enough, so we're going to change some of those things out. Michael, you don't mind, Stephen, do you, if I get all nerdy in the whole marketing thing? I think this group can kind of handle it.

Stephen Warner:
You get as nerdy as you want. We're some of the nerdiest people.

Rick Barker:
Okay, are you guys okay with me going down this psychology stuff with you? Okay, good. All right. Because here are the conversations that we have and we geek out on. But when you're able to grasp this, when you're able to wrap your head around it... I have one of my coaching students who's funny. So this guy fought me. He fought me on a website. I'm big on, "You must own your website. Everything else is rental property. The only thing you own is your website and your email list." Export it every now and then and make sure that it's on a spreadsheet, because some of these companies may shut down one day. But the only thing you own is your website. So he's fighting me on wanting to run his business through Linktree. So here's the thing. I don't fight him on it, but I did tell him, "At the end of our 90 days working together, you will have a website, and you will understand it." So a couple weeks ago, he comes for his coaching call, and he's like... I speak back and forth on Boxer.
He goes, "Dude, I got this great story to tell you." So we get there, we come up and he says, "I cannot look at anything now without thinking about the marketing angle in order to get my music heard." And I'm like, "Mission accomplished. We're done." If that's the only thing you got from this 90 days, mission accomplished at that point, because what you're doing is you are thinking way different than the majority of artists that are currently out there. Okay? So the fact that you guys are here, the fact that this is the kind of nerdy stuff that you're going to let us geek out on, tells me that you guys are going to have a much better opportunity to win, because you're willing to play the game different. Most people are trying to play the game the same, and not all situations are the same.
No two artists' career paths have ever been the same. Most of the time you see the iceberg, you don't see what's below the water. You don't see the amount of times that Taylor Swift gots told no, you just see that she just made $590 million in ticket sales. You don't see the nights that we were up crying. You don't see the conversations that I had with her when I was trying to get her to be different than everyone else. Because if you recall, early on in her career, she was not a strong vocalist. So if she was going to try to beat Carrie Underwood or Miranda Lambert, she would've lost. Because women that were having success when she came out in country music, Martina McBride, Faith Hill, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, all these big voices. And then you've got this little 16-year-old curly-haired kid who's going through puberty, that hasn't fully developed her voice yet.
So what did she do? She focused on the craft of the song. She wrote the songs that the audience would sing louder than her. She wrote their stories. When we started seeing comments on MySpace, and some of you that aren't old enough, MySpace at the time was the only platform that was available. It was the easiest thing to do because all the people were fishing in the same pond. Now you've got so many different lakes to choose from, it's harder now, but it's also easier because we didn't have the technology back then that we have now to get in front of thousands and millions of people at a time. Back then, we had to show up every night and just work with whoever happened to show up. But when we started reading comments like, "I can't believe, it's like you read my diary." "I can't believe that that song speaks so clearly to me."
"I want to thank you because I didn't cut myself or hurt myself after listening to your song, knowing that you also got picked on and you also got bullied." So when you can niche yourself down, or niche, whatever word you choose to use, when you can get just that focused and speak to that audience, your life will change. Because you do not need a million people in order to be successful. Matter of fact, you don't need 10,000 people in order to be successful. I guess, first thing I should say is, one, you have to determine what success means to you, because it's different for everyone. And then you have to put the plan together to go after your version of success. And that's what I love to frame and get the mindset right with the people that we're working with. I did do a whole podcast episode or a YouTube video on lessons I learned from Taylor Swift.
Rick Barker Music is my YouTube channel if you want to go check that out. What I usually do though, is I try to stay away, because a lot of the stuff that she did is not duplicatable. What she did that is duplicatable is her fan engagement. She loved on her people more than... I mean, she loves on them so much they're filing class action lawsuits right now against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. So the fan engagement stuff that she did, focusing on her audience, not trying to please everyone in country music, but focusing on her audience, those are some of the things that made her special. There are some funny stories, but like I said, I put them up on YouTube and stuff like that. But I always, because I have such a limited amount of time, and so do you guys as well, funny stories about Taylor won't make you any money. Understanding what you could duplicate from her will make you a fortune and allow you to-

Michael Walker:
I'll tell you this, my 15-year-old sister stayed up till midnight to listen to Taylor's new album. She listened to it like three times in a row.

Rick Barker:
And then what she didn't realize was that at 3:00 AM there was another album being released for those that did stay up all night and listened to that whole entire record. So that girl dropped two albums in one night and didn't even tell anybody that the second one was going to happen.

Michael Walker:
But it's about the relationship and the feeling of relationship that a fan has with her, is why my sister stayed up that late to listen to a Taylor Swift album. She could've listened to it the next day, but she loves her that much.

Rick Barker:
Yeah, somebody asked me if I was going to be staying up. I'm like, "Not a chance."

Michael Walker:
I was the one who asked you that.

Rick Barker:
Oh, that was you? Yeah. I said, "Not a chance."

Michael Walker:
Right. I said, "Rick," I say, "Hey, you staying up?"

Rick Barker:
Not a chance. It ain't happening.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Well, Rick, thank you so much. We value your time. Your time is so valuable so the fact that you just spent an extra amount of time here with us today-

Rick Barker:
That's it. All right. I got to run. You guys take care. All right, be good.

Michael Walker:
Thanks, Rick.

Stephen Warner:
Yep. See ya.